Hate male, woke v blokes: Football’s depressing bigotry war
Remember when the Soccer Saturday panel was replaced with black, lesbian, disabled muslims? And why that apparently matters?
Sometimes football seems to be such a positive and progressive force for change that it gives you hope for the future. But then it often provides such a safe home to racists and misogynists that it makes you absolutely despair.
Soccer Saturday is usually unlikely to provoke much philosophical debate, but it was the centre of controversy last week when it was announced that 75% of the panel was being defenestrated, leaving only Paul Merson present; he’s surely wearing moccasins on a glacier at the summit of a top, top mountain, Jeff.
Their replacements would definitely all be black, lesbian, disabled muslims, if some of those Twitter users with a Union Jack in their handle were to be believed. And this would be A Bad Thing.
Suddenly, almost as if these people had been waiting for this change of pundits to happen, out came all the poison. No-one had any idea who would be replacing the three ex-players but the assumption was it would be what these critics always hatefully term a ‘woke’ choice: in other words, someone not white and male. And they would, of course, be shit.
Soon, some were saying the three boys’ only crime was being white. Yes, if you can get your head around this, that was the reason they’d been let go, apparently. In this weird belief system, white people are now somehow disenfranchised and men like me are little more than snivelling wretches, begging for mercy at the feet of our new black, lesbian, muslim, fascist dictators. Funny that I hadn’t noticed this oppression at all.
Out of nowhere, speculation that Alex Scott and Micah Richards would be among their replacements grew instantly, presumably because they’re two prominent, popular black people who already talk about football. It felt like this happened so suddenly and on such a scale that those saying it had the two names ready to go, as though already top of their grievance list.
Was black people being on Soccer Saturday really worthy of this outrage? Had they hated Chris Kamara all along? Did they sneer when John Salako, Matt Murray, Glen Johnson or Clinton Morrison and others appeared on many Soccer Specials? Was Soccer Saturday a sacred white show?
It was all just too weird and upsetting. There was a strong undercurrent that this was symbolic of how ‘their’ culture was being undermined and supplanted by something they didn’t want and hadn’t been asked about. This was not only unfair, but another example in a long line of media kowtowing to the PC liberals.
All manner of other prejudices got pulled into its orbit too. Gay, trans, disabled, any non-christian religion, you name it. All friends of the woke and the left. All prepared to oust Phil Thompson, Charlie Nicholas and Matt Le Tissier to install their liberal orthodoxy against the wishes of the common people. Or something.
Perhaps, to be charitable, some are just taking the piss out of the more cliched of the overly sensitive, hand-wringing wet-liberal, quinoa-eating, linen trouser-wearing metropolitan middle-classes who, at least from the outside, appear to dominate the BBC and other media organisations; whether they actually do is another matter. And now they have infiltrated the last bastion of the middle-aged white male bantersaurus: Soccer Saturday
Some sprang to Alex and Micah’s defence, saying how good they were which, though true, didn’t quite seem the point. Long decades have been full of white male pundits of variable quality and entertainment value; do non-white or female pundits have to be absolutely brilliant just to be allowed in? Are they not allowed to spout uninformed cliched garbage like so many white men have for so long?
Then, in a related matter, over the weekend the prospect of a new Fox News-like TV station, working name GB News, was to be set up to express just such views. One of the co-founders, Andrew Cole (not that one) extolled a desire to be “distinctly different from the out-of-touch incumbents,” referring to the BBC and Sky (poor old ITV seems forgotten).
These are the sort of people who think the BBC is a disgrace, for reasons too numerous to go into here but which inevitably pulls Brexit into its reach as a cultural litmus test for everything else, up to and including Soccer Saturday, it seems.
Whether there is a big enough market to sustain such a TV station in the UK is open to debate. It’s one thing to enjoy getting righteously indignant at people on other TV stations, quite another to sit through hours of furious people exactly like you, shouting furiously to people who already agree there is something to be furious about. However, it’s not hard to imagine the audience will comprise some of the people who think Soccer Saturday has been infiltrated by the liberal forces of anti-whiteness – indeed, that there’s enough of them to sell a TV station to.
It’s like the whole Black Lives Matter movement isn’t happening, even though it has had such a high profile in football and continues to do so. But then, this was the summer of the All Lives Matter idiocy, the plane at Burnley, the ‘Winston Churchill, he’s one of our own’ defence of…err…well…statues, I think, by people clearly familiar with football. Of protests on the street about the singing of Land of Hope and Glory by people who didn’t even know the words to Land of Hope and Glory.
It would make a hilarious satirical show. But it’s not a show. It is England in 2020. And it is bloody appalling. ‘Woke’ has become a term behind which to hide racism, misogyny, intolerance and just vague, general annoyance or discontent that things in general are not what they once were and what they once were was largely white and male.
Football often seems to be the crucible for race relations with people from all over the world of all creeds and colours coming together as one to play a sport. But for those who follow the game, or attach themselves to it, it is capable of being both ahead of its time and stuck in the past, at one and the same moment. Just when you think things are getting better, then all of this f*cking shit happens.
I’m sure Ian Wright’s anger and despair was mirrored in many hearts.
— Ian Wright (@IanWright0) August 26, 2020
This is so clearly built into people’s self-identity and these cultural skirmishes are being fought as a proxy for a bigger, more destructive war. And the cry keeps going up, one way or another: “Which side are you on?”
While it is possible to overstate the extent of snide, racist people – and hopefully the majority do not feel quite so ludicrously up in arms at the prospect of Thompson, Nicholas or Le Tissier being replaced by someone who isn’t a white man, whether that happens or not – I don’t believe it is a small minority.
The volume and speed of the response last week over something as minor as changing people on a TV programme, the DNA-deep antagonism and the fact there are people who are prepared to exploit this burning ignorance for profit and power, while selling their crushing oppression as though it is ultimate freedom, makes me fear for the future. Football looked, just briefly, to be winning this war against intolerance and bigotry, but now I see that was an illusion.
No amount of taking a knee, of slogans on shirts, of player-led initiatives, of well-meaning people supporting well-meaning, noble causes is making any difference to them. They laugh at such things; it’s all more woke bullshit to them. If anything, it is making their pot of hate boil more vigorously. So, what do we do? What on earth do we do?
It’s not an easy question to answer because you can’t educate people out of stupidity if they think their stupidity is intelligence, and your intelligence is stupidity. It is a quite desperate situation.
John Nicholson